


The Road You're On

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Beards (Facial Hair), Eventual Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mixtape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: It’s been weeks since Castiel returned, and Dean is slowly learning what it means to live in a new normal.





	The Road You're On

**Author's Note:**

> This was born of a DM conversation in which my friend said, Dean should talk to Jody about his feelings for Cas, and then all of this fell out.
> 
> Big ups to my personal Destiel taste-taster and beta reader, FortLauderTales --I hope your sighs remain a source of concern to your loved ones

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been weeks since Castiel returned, and Dean is slowly learning what it means to live in a new normal.  

 

Granted, he’d be lying if he said that bits of the old normal didn’t remain.

 

Like the idea of sitting next to Cas in a dark room without Sam’s constant interruption or buffering capacity still scares the absolute bejesus out of him.

 

Jody had called, really probably just to check in, and accidentally mentioned a series of mysterious occurrences that had been happening in town, especially around the local cineplex.  One thing lead to another, and now Dean clambers over Cas’s suddenly overly gangly kneecaps, making an irritated noise under his breath.

 

He has to sit on the right-hand side in theaters, everybody knows that. Cas should know that.  It’s his better side, and the one that...fuck, why he is thinking about the Rico Suave arm sweep when it’s a stiff-shouldered, not human, newly back from the dead best friend sitting next to him in the dark?  

 

He almost stands back up to excuse himself for a quick brain bleaching, when he’s interrupted by Cas’s low rumble of, “What are you doing, Dean?” as Cas has finally had enough of Dean’s huffing, puffing, and jostling around in his seat.

 

“What’s your face doing?” Dean retorts, ever the picture of maturity.

 

“Several involuntary functions, such as blinking and…” Dean can’t pretend that when Cas finally returned from whatever desolate wasteland he’d been banished to that he hadn’t noticed how Castiel had seemingly reverted to some other form, and not the one that left. It isn’t amnesia, really, but more of a reset that appears to have violently yanked back all the previous evolution Castiel has had from warrior-like automaton of angel death to bumbling, awkward guy that Dean is kind of in love with, on his better days.  

 

“Shut up, Cas. I can see your face, I know what it’s doing, I was just…” He doesn’t have the energy for this restart, he really doesn’t. It’s bad enough that his mom is still in whatever hellscape she managed to get zipped into and Sam is riding around on some righteous high horse about protecting devil-baby halflings; he doesn’t need this overwhelming sense of wrongness emanating from the one person who generally brings him comfort.

 

“And anyway, I think we should be focused on the task at hand. Not on my face.” Castiel stretches his long fingers against the tops of his thighs, like maybe he’s remembering that he has hands. He’s practically a newborn baby now. “We have a monster to track.”

 

“Well, if either of us ends up with a faceful of wraith, we’ll certainly know it.” At this point, Dean wouldn’t really argue with a wraith-issued mind-scrubbing, but maybe a gentler version than the ones he’s witnessed. He sighs forcefully and fingers the silver blade in his jacket pocket, because at least that’s solid.    

 

Inane trivia flips by on the movie screen, and a pair of pimply teenagers suck face (not in a wraith-y way) three rows down, but there are zero signs of any specters. Dean has at least had the wherewithal to execute proper heterosexual male movie theater spacing, leaving one seat free between them, but somewhere in the last few minutes while he was attempting to remember the name of John McClane’s wife in the Die Hard trilogy, Cas is all but having knee sex with him. “What the hell, man?” He pushes Cas’s leg away, maybe more forcefully than strictly necessary, and practically climbs up to perch on the opposite arm of the recliner.  

 

Come to think of it, they do look a little ridiculous sitting so far apart in these giant armchairs.  When did movies get so damn comfortable anyway? Where did gross sticky floors and metal armrests digging into your sides go? Humanity had just gone so _soft_.

 

“The hell,” Cas always sounds like he’s about to start yelling about brimstone whenever he references the place, “is that we were making ourselves more conspicuous with this large divide between us and I was bridging the gap.”

 

If that’s not a goddamn on-the-nose metaphor, Dean really doesn’t want to hear the more accurate one. “No, this is plenty conspicuous, thanks. And since when do you decide what’s so super average and normal?”

 

Cas is close enough that Dean could smell his hair product if Cas was the kind of angel who required hair product. Instead, he just smells kind of staticky, like clothes Dean just took out of the dryer. For all Dean knows, that’s what hydrofluorocarbons smell like. “I’m sure the perpetually irritable grousing coming from our row is much less attention grabbing.” There’s that old sarcasm, Dean thinks, and he’d be lying if it didn’t set off a little ripple of relief that tingles all the way down his tired, but currently too well-supported spine.  

 

Maybe Cas’ll just be slow to come back - whole- and there won’t be another shoe that drops straight onto Dean’s head like the anvil that is his life.  

 

The movie ends, the house lights come up, and it’s still just Dean and Cas and the two kids--lips all swollen and hair-mussed--in the theater, no wraith in sight.

 

Dean sighs and gives Castiel a little push forward into the aisle, because Sioux Falls’s supernatural creature population remains unchanged for one more night, and Dean still just barely survived having to sit two inches from Cas’s rhythmic breathing and warm arm without being able to kill a damn thing.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“At least there’s home-cooking,” Dean exclaims, doing that fake jovial thing that really just means he’s covering seven layers of confusion and weirdness, and that every single one of his friends and family instantly recognize for exactly what it is.  

 

Castiel doesn’t even blink.

 

He’s staring out the car window like something on the side of the road is going to raise up and terrorize him, or maybe he’s not thinking about anything at all. It’s impossible to tell, really, with all that blankness. “Hmm.”

 

Not that Cas gives two craps about home cooking, because molecules are molecules no matter what pot they’re boiled in, and he doesn’t really need to eat anyway. Suddenly Dean barks out a hysterical little laugh because he’s picturing Cas in a frilly apron stirring a big old cauldron of atoms, and his laugh makes Cas jump about six feet in the air, bumping his head on Baby’s roof.  

 

“Sorry, dude.  I just…” There was nothing _under_ the apron. “I had this vision.”

 

That proves to be a poor choice of words, because now Castiel is interested, “What kind of vision? A dream? A portent? Some kind of omen?”

 

Oh, it was an omen, all right, Dean thinks, and smirks to himself. Except he has the eagle eye of one confused and self-headbutting angel focused on him, and there is no such thing as concealing it. “No, Cas, just a funny picture. ‘Cause you don’t care about food, and I…”   _don’t care about my own sanity, apparently_ , “It was just a quick little cartoon blip. No need to rev up an exorcism.”

 

“You know I just know those by rote.  No preparation necessary.”

 

“Of course.” Dean gives him a mock salute. “I’ll just be keeping my eyes on the road then.”  

 

* * *

 

 

 

Jody, disappointingly, has not prepared a heaping helping of atomic particles, but she did order two large meat lovers pizzas, so Dean is placated for the time being. He inhales three slices before Castiel disappears into one of the back bedrooms claiming research and leaves Jody staring Dean down like a suspect in her latest interrogation.

 

“Things going okay?”

 

Dean texts Jody at least three times a week, she knows how things are going. His mom is gone, his brother is disagreeable, and his angel is around, but off somehow. All in all, his life is a low-grade shitshow, now with complicated feelings. That knife in his pocket sounds more and more tempting with every passing minute sometimes. “Living the dream.”

 

“You didn’t have to come all this way for a wraith. You know Claire or Donna or I could handle that in our sleep.” She takes another bite of pizza, chewing thoughtfully. She’s about to drop some kind of mom science on him, he can feel it as sharply as he feels a hard rain coming in his busted up knee. “You just need some quality Jody time?”

 

He grunts and shrugs, because caveman brain. It seems to do the trick, though, because after she finishes her slice, Jody starts clearing off the remains of dinner and gives him zero minutes of a lecture.

 

She coasts through the kitchen on socked feet and flicks on some music, a classic rock station that seems to be playing the Allman Brothers catalog in its entirety while Dean nurses his beer.  Magically, that beer turns into another, which turns into a glass of whiskey because that’s the kind of night Dean’s having. The third whiskey morphs into Jody giving him the soft eyes of reproach that he’s not altogether thrilled with, as she settles back in across the table from him, her denim-clad leg tucked beneath her.

 

“This beard thing,” Jody rubs at the side of her chin with the back of her curled fingers, “You’re still doing that, huh?”

 

Dean nods, “It’s easy.” Not shaving is easy because for about four months, he couldn’t really be trusted to hold anything sharp that close to any major arteries. Granted, he’s better now, hey, Cas is back!, but truth be told, he’s not all that much better.  It’s a little itchy even all these months in, and still when he passes a mirror he wonders why there’s a homeless guy following him. A month or so before Cas had returned, Sam slipped something called Beard Lube and Conditioner into Dean’s shaving kit, most likely to be helpful or encouraging, even. Squeezing the entire tube of beard goo into Sam’s enormous flipper of a boot was satisfying, but not quite as satisfying as the wet _sqwooshing_  noise it made when Sam attempted to insert his foot the next morning.

 

The unmitigated joy lasted all of forty-two seconds, until Dean went to elbow Cas in the ribcage to share in the hilarity, and that was the precise moment Dean realized that Cas wasn’t there anymore.  He can't really say what happened after that, only that he's had mythical stomach cancers that were less painful than those first few seconds.  He knew that he had had to sit down, and that Sam had loomed over him, all attentive and worried and just this side of blurry. 

 

There was definitely probably drinking.

 

Jody bites the inside of her lip like she has something that she wants to say, but hell if Dean knows what it is. “Okay, so what’s going on, Tex?”  

 

“What makes you think something’s going on?” Only because something is _always_ going on because that is just how things shake out for Dean. Always. Every time he thinks he has something licked, there’s yet another surprise hiding behind Door Number Three. And usually, it has a gun or three heads or just generally wants to murder everyone Dean loves. “I got the world on a string here.”

 

Jody swirls her finger in the ring of condensation that Dean’s glass has made on the cheap oak table. “You certainly do.”  

 

“Does he seem,” Dean flicks his head back toward the bedroom, “Weird to you?” Because telling weird on Castiel is a matter of degrees anyway, but Jody has that keen and potent combination of women’s intuition and finely honed police skills. “He seems weird to me.”   _Because he’s acting like he hardly remembers me and he seems to have forgotten that he told me that he loved me and apparently I got hit with a witchy spell that turned me into a twelve-year-old girl that's making me think these squirrelly thoughts_ , he wants to say. But instead, because less is more, he settles on, “So weird.”

 

She cocks her head, and it sends an acute pang of nostalgia zigzagging through his chest how much it reminds him of Cas, the old Cas. “I mean, he seems okay. Quiet, maybe a little distant.”

 

“Distant. Yeah, that’s it!” Dean’s wild gesticulation accidentally bumps his half empty tumbler of Jack Daniels and the amber liquid splashes out onto the table. “I mean, he does. Seem distant.”  Casual isn't a thing that inebriated Dean does well anymore, apparently.

 

“It’s probably hard, being back. We don’t know where he was, or what it was like, and I think we all know Castiel probably isn’t the most expressive guy in the universe.” There’s an unspoken, _like some other people we know_ , “I’m sure he’s just getting acclimated. Well, re-acclimated.”  

 

Jody passes him a towel to sop up some of his mess, but Dean’s ability to multitask has depleted with each additional sip of liquor, and he flips the towel up onto his shoulder like he's working behind the bar at the Roadhouse. Jody audibly sighs.

 

“He can’t seem to...y’know, get settled.”

 

“Give him some time. It can’t be easy, hurtling through planes of existence and whatnot.” She makes a face like she just heard the words coming out of her own mouth. “This life gets harder and harder to get used to sometimes, am I right?”

 

“It’s a series of constant and harrowing kicks to the jewels.”    

 

Jody smiles, “Well, I’ll tell ya, Dean. It’s certainly nice to hear your voice again.”

 

“C’mon, I’ve been around plenty,” he shrugs, pushing his glass from hand to hand.

 

“Yeah, you’ve been around a lot. More than usual. But when you’re here,” she mimes a zipper over the lip, “Quiet as a church mouse.”

 

“I’ve had a lot on my mind.”  

 

“I remember Bobby saying that you used to do that when you were little---”

 

“Hey Doc, you got a license to practice headshrinking in South Dakota?” He’s teasing, but he’s not, and he doesn’t need reminding that he’s still grieving. For his Mom, for the Castiel he used to have, for everything. “It’s just easier not to talk, sometimes.”

 

She nods, “I get that. Not a lot of yapping required. But you know, he’s back now.”

 

“So?”

 

“So, talk.”

 

Call him stupid, but he thought that was what they were doing already. “Jody, you might need to run this by me real slow. Talk to me like I’m five.”

 

He ignores the fact that she gives him an eye roll that says, _how’s that any different than any other day,_  and she shifts in her chair, switching so that the knee she once perched on is now in front of her, arm wrapped around. “How long have you two known each other now?”

 

Not counting the years Cas sat in Heaven watching humanity, Dean computes, “Going on ten years.”

 

“Dean Winchester, are you attempting to master the slow burn?” She teases.  

 

“I’m gonna need a map and a machete to get out of this conversation, aren’t I?” He hasn’t had enough alcohol to admit anything to anyone, so the best route seems to be derision and deflection. Running away appears to be out the question, and he can’t very well sock her in the nose, which is what he would do if it were Sam sitting across the table from him trying to get him to spill his Cas-loving guts.  

 

“I have eyes, Dean, and a heart, and a head. I saw you, after it happened. After you said good-bye to him, when you thought he was gone for good.”  

 

He decides to leave out the part that he never really said good-bye, even when the last of the flames were flickering to ash on the pyre, because he didn’t the fucking cojones to say it. Sam’s eyes were watery and he’d said to Dean, all slobbery and wrecked, “I loved him, too,” and it had taken all of Dean’s strength in that moment not to push his own bawling brother into the same fiery pit.

 

“And now he’s here and you’re acting like he’s still a million miles away.”

 

Dean’s chest tightens and there’s something in his throat he needs to swallow around, because he actively loves and misses a guy who’s sitting in the next room, “I’m not sure that he isn’t.”

 

It wasn’t that long ago that Dean had been all but hallucinating Cas’s return, and when Cas actually did show up, Dean wasn't sure if he should call the funny farm and ask for a ride, or greet his friend with a much overdue hug. He’d eventually chosen hug, and he’d held a board-stiff Castiel in his arms for much longer than he’d intended. Cas had had to carefully extract himself from Dean’s vice-like hold, mildly confused, while Dean stammered and stuttered and pretended that the embrace was overlong because it came from both him and Sam.  

 

It’s not as if he’d been eager to tell his friends how he walked around in shock for days afterward, banging into walls, slamming doors purposefully on his hands, just to make sure that Cas's return wasn’t a dream he needed to wake up from.

 

“Maybe not in the same way that he left, but I assure you,  Dean, that angel on your shoulder is real, and he’s definitely here.”  

 

“I can’t just...I don’t...what if I...I’m going to screw this up.” says Dean, as the weight of his words sinks into the warmth of Jody’s gaze. “If I tell him that I love him--” The good news is, nothing in the room has spontaneously combusted and he spit out the whole four letter word, “I can’t screw this up.”   

 

She reaches across the table for his hand, gives it a squeeze. “Here’s the thing though, I don’t think you can. For goodness sake, Dean, the things that you all encounter every day, and you can just run in, guns blazing...give you one cute guy in a trenchcoat to tell how you feel and it’s like I’m asking you to dig out the Grand Canyon with a spoon.”  

 

Truthfully, he has no problem knowing that he loves Cas, or having Cas hear that he loves him.  He just doesn't want to say it and have it get shoved right back at him, or worse.  Dean takes a last gulp of his drink and sets his glass down a little harder than he means to. “I appreciate you taking the time to try to help me out, I do, but we’ve got a case and I just…”

 

“I’m sorry to butt in, really. But sometimes I just see you floundering and the Mom in me...Maybe if you two talked about it, things wouldn’t seem so off.”

 

“So you’re saying that the guy who doesn’t need food, or sleep, or water, or sunlight, you’re saying what he needs is…”

 

“You.” Jody stands and stretches while Dean listens to each vertebrae as it pops and settles.  “I’m saying that what he may need is you.” She leans over to kiss his temple, “So, sorry for the intrusion and peace be with you. Vaya con Dios, my friend,” and then she does little bow and scuttles off toward her bedroom, leaving Dean by himself at the kitchen table, just this side of bewildered.

 

He sits a little while longer, listening to the distant sounds of water running and a television set flipping on, and he wonders how he got to be so bad at pretending to be able to keep things together. It just seems everyone sees right through him anymore.  

 

It might be nice to take a day off from the facade, though, so he’s gonna grab Jody’s spoon and start his digging tonight.

 

* * *

 

 

Decision made, Dean lumbers down the short hallway, boozy and oddly content, his kneecaps pleasantly disconnected from the rest of his body.  

 

He arrives at the bedroom to find Castiel stretched out, completely rigid, on the double bed.  Cas is still wearing his coat and suit and tie, shoes on, like he remembers that he should look like someone who does normal things like sleep, but he can’t get the details quite right.  

 

“Didja forget how beds work too?” Dean says lightly, his shoulder nudging against the doorframe.

 

Castiel stares back at him, utterly blank.  

 

“I guess so,” Dean says under his breath, as he hauls himself into the room, using the furniture as hand holds until he can make it to either a chair or the bed, which unfortunately appears very occupied at the moment.

 

“Dean, why are you staggering? Were you drinking?” His voice denotes no worry, just observational curiosity.

 

“Excuse me, but are you seriously spread-angel in my bed right now wearing your filthy shoes?” Dean leans heavily against the dresser because boozily disconnected knees equals not great balance, it turns out.

 

Cas sits up, and he looks almost bleary. Maybe he did take a nap. Or he’s pretending that he did, for reasons currently undisclosed. Cas makes no move to vacate the space, but he does angle his feet so his boots hang off the edge of the bed. Concessions: made, Dean supposes.  

 

When Cas had come back, there had been a brief tug of war about, “hey, what about a wardrobe change?” because once you fall out of the sky for the nine hundredth time, you probably deserve something in a worn-in pair of jeans or a softer shirt made of natural fibers that might bring out the blue in your eyes. But instead, they compromised on...exactly what Cas wanted, as per usual, which was to wear the exact same thing he's always fucking worn.

 

Dean figures that if he’s about to bare his soul, he can at least be comfortable, so he digs in the duffle bag he'd thrown in the corner for clothes to sleep in, coming up with a clean t-shirt and some track pants. He takes his knife and wallet and keys out of his jacket pockets and lines them up neatly on the desk. He starts to fold the jacket over the back of the chair when he feels a familiar plastic rectangle in the inside pocket, and maybe he knows a way to get things started.  

 

Dean kicks off his jeans, shucks his shirt, and since he gave up on the entire concept of modesty years ago, he stands in his boxers, cassette tape held aloft. He might as well be standing underwater for as heavy as his limbs suddenly feel. “Hey, so I, uh, have been meaning to give this back to you.”

 

Cas looks briefly troubled, but pushes himself up to a sitting position when he realizes what Dean is holding. “Dean, you found it.” His tone is almost reverent.

 

“You lost it?”

 

“No, I...it was…”

 

“In your coat pocket. I know. I found it when,” Dean looks down at his hands, then at the toe of Cas’s short leather boot, and then anywhere but Cas’s goddamn face. “We gave you a hell of a goodbye, just so you know.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Big hunter’s farewell. I didn’t...I couldn’t...there weren’t a lot of people, though, because I didn’t want…” Because it’s far simpler to be in denial when twenty other people aren’t around to witness it. Plus, who would Dean have invited? Everyone else is gone. “It’s probably good Claire’s on the road right now, because if you thought she didn’t take things well the last time...she was kind of used to the old you again, finally, and then even he was…”

 

“I know, Dean. My memory is completely intact.” Cas makes a displeased face, like he might ask if Dean’s still is, since he can't seem to remember that Castiel isn't suffering from any kind of amnesia. Dean almost makes an amnesia amnesia joke to break the tension, but thinks better of it.

 

So Dean scrambles to pull on his t-shirt instead and uses the intervening few seconds to hide the redness that’s creeping up his neck and into his face. “And anyway, when I was getting you…” If Dean lives another six lifetimes, which in all honesty, is absolutely possible, he probably won’t ever manage to forget what it was like wrapping Castiel in that shroud, how cold and still his body was. How empty. Dean still gets nauseous when he thinks about it, especially when he’s around any kind of campfire or campfire adjacent activity. “I should really thank you for not bleeding. That’s always the worst part of a hunter’s funeral, you know and at least you had the decency to be very clean and neat. You were just...asleep.”

 

Cas’s eyes are still fixed on Dean with laser focus.  

 

“I don’t know why I...I probably shouldn’t have been going through your stuff. Maybe I thought that you’d be carrying,” the truth was, he was so beside himself with rage and the idea of revenge that he was looking for a better weapon, as if Castiel was keeping an archangel arsenal in his coat pockets and just not mentioning it for nine years. “But instead, I found this bad boy all twisted up in your pocket and I...I know that I should have sent it with you but it was broken anyway. It just seemed to me that there’s was something I could actually do...I could fix it for you, make it right.”

 

“It was a terrible mess, wasn’t it?” Dean isn’t sure if Cas is referring to any and all life events leading up until that moment or just the cassette tape itself. “I had purchased a Walkmale at a Goodwill store, and I don’t think it was in the best shape, because it often would skip or get stuck…”

 

Dean laughs. “The WalkMAN, dude. Yeah, I imagine anyone’s Walkman would have needed a good once-over, seeing as no one has used one since 1987. And I guess they didn’t teach you winged creatures the zen art of cassette tape repair in angel school either. A little splicing and it’s good as new.”

 

“There was no such sch---” Castiel stops himself. “You spliced it?” He moves his mouth soundlessly, most likely trying to conjugate what two words Dean could have just combined to come up with the world splice--spit and----

 

“Just a good old piece of Scotch tape and a can-do attitude.”

 

The smile that spreads over Castiel’s face is a balm to Dean’s frayed nerves as he accepts the proffered cassette. “I thought I would never hear this again. I had listened to it so many times that it had been worn completely out. I think even the nephilim had begun to enjoy it.” A brief picture of Cas settling headphones on Kelly Kline’s swollen belly passes through Dean’s head and he gets that love-drunk warmth spreading in his gut.  However, it's pretty obvious from Cas’s face that the memory isn’t as sweet.

 

“Hey, you took good care of them.”

 

“Well, I needed to be able to care of _something._ ”

 

Dean leans over to give Cas a sympathetic shoulder bump and he practically falls into his lap.  Cas pushes on Dean’s elbow to help him to straighten back up. “I mean, I get that. I totally get that.”

 

“Perhaps I learned it from watching you with the people that you love,“ Cas says, completely matter of fact. Dean wishes he could be capable of that amount of detachment, because fuck, some of this life business could be a thousand times simpler that way. “Anyway, at last count, I had heard those songs over thirty-four hundred times.”

 

“Whoa there, Cas, that’s some serious Zeppelin dedication. I don’t think even Robert Plant has played _Kashmir_ that many times in the last forty years.”

 

“Dean.”

 

Shit. He’s got that face on--the one that zaps people into outer space and murders lesser angels with a look and an arched eyebrow--and now it’s directed full-tilt at Dean.  

 

“I remember, you know.”

 

“What do you remember?”

 

“The gift that you gave me when you presented me with this tape. The first time.” Castiel waves it in the air and the tape reels make a plastic clacking sound.

 

“Dude, it wasn’t a fucking ceremony. No one paraded anywhere playing a lute. I handed you a plastic rectangle with some awesome Zepp tracks on it.”

 

“You _handed me_ something that you made for me. Something that you loved, you wanted to share with me.”

 

“I’m not the only one who loves those songs. Millions of people love Zeppelin.”

 

“Did you make _millions_ of mixed tapes to give to _millions_ of Zeppelin fans?”

 

Dean continues to relish the return of Sarcasmo, the patron saint of smart alecks and hunters with repressed feelings. “I’m sorry, did you just call it a mixed tape? It isn’t ‘iced’ cream.”

 

“Actually…”

 

Dean groans. “A mixtape. And anyway, proceed.”

 

“Stop acting as if it means nothing, Dean.” Cas doesn’t seem angry, necessarily, just tired.  Which is strange, because angels don’t get tired. They get pissed, they get smitey, they get even. “You created that compilation,” he pauses, proud. “You created that tape as a response to something.”

 

“Yeah, a response to the stylin’ tunes of Page and Plant.”

 

“Stop being so glib, Dean.” Cas’s eyebrows are set in a very angry line, and Dean gets the sense that if he doesn’t course-correct, thunderbolts and lightning aren’t far off.

 

“Okay, Tom Cruise, I’m sorry. I do that when you’re scaring the crap out of me.” He holds up his hands in mock surrender.

 

“Don’t belittle the action. It means something. What you gave me, it meant something.”

 

“Okay, yeah, it did, but did it mean something to you?” Dean’s voice comes out smaller than he means it to.

 

“I now know every word to _Ramble On_ and _The Rain Song_ and I understand why they are important to you. Also, I think that _What Is and What Should Never Be_ is my favorite, but it sounds so dour when you say it aloud.” He makes a face and Dean wants to kiss him, right then, like he’s never wanted to kiss him before.

 

But instead he clenches his hands into tight fists and thinks about all the ways that he’s failed Cas and all the ways that he could possibly do it again, and he can’t act on any of it. The tape was too much, too far, too obvious. “That’s a great one, though. That guitar riff---” All this standing is making him dizzy, and he lurches a little toward the bed.

 

Castiel moves over, makes room for Dean to sit more fully next to him and to prevent him from pitching over. Cas lays back flat, the cassette tape resting on his sternum, near his heart. They sit together in the silence, elbows touching, breathing at each other for a few minutes before Dean’s nervous energy and alcohol-laden lack of inhibition takes over again.  

 

“So what was it like, where you were?”

 

Cas contemplates the ceiling, the water marks and the hairline crack that’s coming in from the eaves. Dean thinks that he ought to patch that up for Jody sometime, no sense in having a torrential rainfall sweep through the girls' room someday. “It was very quiet, until I was found by the others.”

 

“Friends or enemies?”

 

“A little from Column A, a little from Column B.” Cas won’t talk about where he was, where angels go when they die. Every time an overly curious Sam or Dean gets anywhere near the topic, he gets all vague and random, and Dean envisions some kind of angel non-disclosure agreement Cas had to sign to get set free.  

 

“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”  

 

Cas ignores him, apparently, because he presses on. “It was very painful, not being here. My chest...it would literally ache when I thought of the bunker, and that terrible coffee that you make in the morning, even the mildew of our motel bathrooms. The idea that I would not experience that again...it created a void, one that could not be filled. There were times that I even became nostalgic thinking of Crowley’s inane banter and interminable method of speaking.”  

 

“You’ve had him in a mental headlock more than once, dude.”

 

“I think I might have traded many things to hear him insult me one last time.”

 

“There’s a word for all of that though, Cas. It’s called homesickness. You missed home--because the bunker, mildew, the King of Hell--all of that means home to you.”

 

“Those are not the only things that mean home to me, Dean.” Moving the cassette to safer purchase on the nightstand, Castiel readjusts to pull a small, rectangular lidded box out of his pocket.  

 

Upon closer inspection, it’s not a box at all but more the illusion of one-- it’s white and shimmery and floats an inch or so above Castiel’s long thin fingers. For all Dean knows, Cas just pulled radioactive angel waste or a quasar or a nuclear bomb out of his coat, but something about it causes Dean to instinctively cover his junk with both hands. (He briefly considers why he’s concerned about the motility of his sperm, but he guesses it’s important to keep one’s options open.) It takes a few seconds before Dean registers that the words _Zeppelin Rules_ hover over the opalescent cover in perfect heavy metal-style script.

 

“Didja doodle Mr. and Mr. Castiel Winchester all over your Trapper Keeper too?”

 

Cas can turn him to dust with one look, and bingo, there’s the one. “I need you to know that I chose this. It wasn’t done to me as a punishment. And I truly believed that I would not be able to return to earth in this century, within your lifetime. Missing those things, missing you, I didn’t know how to handle that. In all my existence, I had never attached significance to humans or mattresses or music. Until I met you.”

 

Dean shrugs, half embarrassed, but mostly pleased. “I’m glad I could introduce you to the memory foam. If you don’t remember it, at least it remembers you.”

 

He narrows his eyes at Dean, and _Zeppelin Rules_ glitters in the air, its energy emitting a little hum, like it’s agreeing with Cas that Dean is being a dick. “There were no hard drugs where I was. I couldn’t act out, hurt things, as you like to do when you are feeling melancholy,” he says, pointedly. “I knew I couldn’t continue into eternity with that pit existing in my soul, and I was offered an opportunity to take away that pain.”

 

“By who?”

 

“It hardly matters now, Dean. But it meant that I wouldn’t have emotion attached to the memory anymore. When I thought of Led Zeppelin, I would know Mr. Plant and Mr. Page, and their catalogue of songs, but it would mean nothing more than a collection of words set to melody.  When I thought of Lebanon, Kansas, I would think of lush trees and plains and anonymous humans that reside within its borders. When I thought of you--”

 

“Collection of skin and bones, reporting for duty.” Dean interjects, because otherwise his ribcage is going to collapse under the heft of his own disappointment.

 

“I made this, after the procedure, so that I would know that it worked. Since I didn’t have the music anymore, I put the essence of everything that I could remember into this pocket, and if I could experience what was held inside without feeling the torment of missing all that I had left behind---”

 

“But you didn’t have to do that, Cas. Eventually you would have gotten over all of this. Moved on. Had a nice little life in the great wide--”

 

“Have you?” Cas interrupts.

 

“Okay, man, low blow.” Dean shifts on the bed, inching ever closer to the angel.  There's a split second where he considers laying a hand on Cas's polyester encased arm and then he thinks better of it.  Or worse.  Whichever means he doesn't touch anybody voluntarily.

 

“Dean, you know that I have always put you above anyone else on this planet or any other.  There is Hell, there is Heaven, there is Dean Winchester.” He elevates his hand as he enumerates each item, his fingers hovering over his head when he calls Dean by name.  “When they extracted those feelings--”

 

“They restored you to factory settings.” Dean finishes for him, wanting mostly to throw up because the day that he finally decides that he’s going to say something definitive on this topic is the day that he learns Cas can’t possibly return his feelings.

 

Dean mentally upgrades his life to _hot lava shitshow._

 

“They restored me to factory settings,” Cas parrots, his expression dismal.

 

“So now? Zippo? Zilch?” Dean’s sure that Cas can hear the pounding of his heartbeat because it’s hammering at a pretty good velocity against the barrier of his ribcage.

 

Castiel pauses, taking a grounding breath. “I think that what no one was able to account for is that I’ve possessed human senses, and those senses remain a gateway. Smells, taste, touch.  These things all exist independently of our associations...” When Cas glances down, he takes notice of the arm that is currently separating them. “Your scars, I’m not familiar with these. Are they new?”

 

“I may have gone a little kamikaze since you and Mom were gone. Didn’t really care if I ran into a burning building.” Dean shrugs, remembering just how many times Sam stood on the edge of a dark room/field/forest/abandoned warehouse, yelling some put-upon variation of “Goddamnit, Dean!”

 

Cas traces the newest one, compliments of a crocotta that may have used Castiel’s timbre to lure Dean a little deeper into his lair, and the wound itself is still edged a bit red and raw. Dean shivers at his touch. “I can fix these for you, if you’d like.”

 

There’s a part of him that wishes angel grace could also heal all the fissures and cracks that make it so hard for him just let go and love the man sitting in front of him without reservation. “Naw, you don’t have to. I think they make me look tough.”

 

Castiel raises his hand, brushing the wiry bristles of Dean’s beard growth. “So does this.” He squints at it, as if he’s solving a puzzle on Dean’s face or even just trying to mentally justify how it always grows in reddish-colored. “It makes you look so much like John.”  

 

“I don’t suppose I need to remind you that you shouldn’t bring up a guy’s father while you’re in bed with him.”

 

“We are clearly sitting, fully clothed, and we’re conversing, Dean. We are not engaged in any method of coitus.”

 

“Not with talk like that, we’re not.”

 

Castiel has clearly had it up to here with Dean’s nonsense, and he’s collecting himself to say something terse when Dean leans up and abruptly kisses him.  

 

It lands softly on the corner of Cas’s mouth, not really even where Dean was aiming, but it works for multiple purposes ( _hey, shut up,_ and _goddamn, I've been wanting to do that)_  and it feels right. Cas hesitates, but Dean can sense the locomotive of Castiel’s mind as it switches tracks, and he clutches a handful of Dean’s shirt, his eyes actually illuminating with the realization of what’s happening.  

 

It makes Dean wonder if Cas has thought about doing this before--god, if he’s ever imagined this--maybe that’s why he suddenly looks so fucking delighted, when literally nothing has made Cas look anything but nonplussed since he hit topside.  

 

Dean takes the pause as opportunity to kiss Cas again, this time with tighter accuracy and more urgency, a little delirious with need. He’s not sure what he expected kissing Castiel to feel like, if it should be the equivalent of sucking on a moonbeam, but mostly everything just tastes like whiskey and mouth, soft lips and rough stubble, and for him, anyway, it’s fucking incredible. “Can you _feel_ any of this?”

 

Dean can’t believe he’s asking anyone, namely a warrior of God, how he feels about kissing him even after he just spent the better part of a year mourning him, but again, he’ll refer you to his life, the shitshow. Right now, however, it’s decidedly less shitty.

 

“Dean, stop talking.” Cas’s fingers are in his hair now, and not that far away, Dean hears the opening chords of _Stairway_ playing. It takes a few seconds to untangle that it’s Castiel’s quasi-stellar object of Dean/Cas stored memories that’s emitting the sound.  

 

“What the fu--” Dean’s mouth gets covered pretty quickly by Cas’s at that point, and Cas presses the flat of his palm to the back of Dean’s neck, so he’s not going any damn place now.

 

This is foreplay, there is no question, and Dean finally divests Castiel of his coat, and his suit jacket, almost strangles him with his tie. “Help a brother out here, Cas.”  

 

Cas’s eyes are a little wild as he disentangles himself from his necktie but his gaze never leaves Dean’s lips. Dean yanks off his own boxers and pants, and Cas’s seem to disappear into the ether, and before he knows it, Dean’s straddling Cas’s lap and licking straight into his mouth like he’s never been hungrier for anything.

 

Hands explore chests and dip down over hipbones while Castiel sucks a dark spot onto the ridge of Dean’s jaw, right at the edge of his beard line, and then ducks to take a nipple into his mouth, which elicits a torrent of curse words and unintelligible gibberish out of Dean. He can’t remember the last time he felt so out of control, until he can, and he immediately quashes those memories in favor of being in the moment with Castiel, and his fucking ludicrously talented tongue.  

 

“Hey,” Dean nudges at Cas, pulling lightly at his hair to get him to turn his face and look back up at Dean. “Hey.”

 

“Hello, Dean.” Oh yeah, that’s gonna problematic the next time we’re in mixed company, Dean thinks, as all of his blood pools directly in his groin and his erection intensifies. “Is there something you need?”  

 

“Ughh, fuuuuuuuck.” Cas skims his fingers along the underside of Dean’s cock at an excruciatingly slow rate, and he eventually closes his hand around the head, giving it an unexpected, but entirely welcome squeeze. Dean lets out another satisfied sigh.

 

“Yes, I believe that was what I was attempting, and you’ve interrupted.”

 

Dean curbs his basest instinct to retort about sass mouth not being sexy, because that is a bald-faced lie, and kisses Cas’s swollen lips, biting the bottom one gently. “No, seriously. One minute time out.”

 

Dean half pushes Cas’s head back with his own, wresting himself away from the angel’s firm grip. Castiel leans back, panting slightly, the sinew of his chest rising and falling with each labored breath. “Is this still okay with you?” Cas asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“God, yes, of course. Jesus. Christ. No. No, neither of them. They’ll ruin this.”

 

“Dean, I refer you back to your earlier statement about discussing one’s father in the bedroom.”  

 

“Touche.” Dean finds Cas’s hand, the one that wasn’t just wrapped around his dick, and brings it up to his lips, softly kissing each knuckle. “Hey, this isn’t just...I, uh, I wanted to tell you that this isn’t some one night, what happens in Sioux Falls stays in Sioux Falls kind of thing.”  And to be clear, Dean has no intention of leaving this in South Dakota, but he doesn’t know another way to say, _Don’t you fucking leave me._

 

“No. It isn’t.” Castiel rubs a little ruefully at Dean’s scraggly beard as Cas's hand passes near his cheek. It’s tender and Dean can’t help but relax into it. “I miss your face.”

 

“I’ll shave today,” says Dean, because all the guy had to do was ask, and he rests his forehead flush against the crest of Cas’s shoulder in attempt to collect his own wits.

 

Dean’s reverie breaks as Cas drops a gentle kiss onto the curve of Dean’s cheek and returns to his earlier ministrations. Dean loses all train of thought as Castiel squeezes, stroking tenderly upward and then pushing firmly back down toward the base. Cas has one hand between Dean’s legs and the other disappears behind him, teasing at the cleft of his ass, as he eventually sinks to his knees next to the bed in order to take Dean fully into his mouth.  

 

Cas’s eyes are dark with an unbridled lust and it’s not really all that different from how he looks at Dean on a normal day, and that’s when Dean knows that he’s well and truly fucked.

 

When Dean finally comes, it’s like a gunshot; explosive and sharp and endlessly powerful, and he collapses into a boneless heap somewhere in the vicinity of his pillow. “That was awesome,” he mumbles into the crown of Castiel’s hairline. “You are fucking awesome.”

 

Cas is quiet, pliant under Dean’s hand as it crosses over the smooth, wide expanse of his well-muscled back, and his breath tickles over Dean’s bare chest, seeping into his skin like groundwater.

 

It’s warm in all the places that their bodies connect, and a blissed out Dean lays with Cas draped over him like a blanket, matching the drumbeat of his heart as he slips into sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean creeps out of the bedroom in the pre-dawn twilight in search of aspirin and caffeine, and bumps directly into Jody, who’s already up and dressed and nursing a cup of coffee at the breakfast table. She stirs her creamer in slowly, each revolution clinking against the side of the cup. “So you do know that we share a wall when you stay here, right?”

 

“Good morning?” Dean croaks. His mouth tastes like hot garbage and he knows he’s gonna go dig up his toothbrush before he crawls back into bed and presses up alongside Cas.  

 

“Aspirin’s on the left, Advil on the right, pick your poison.” She instructs, taking a swig of her morning brew. “I got another call from near the cineplex late last night but you guys seemed a little…”

 

“Tied up. Yeah.” Dean never thought he'd be grateful that he never had to spend his teen years with an attentive parent because, Jesus, who knew anyone could be so intense. "Hey, about,”  Dean jerks his head toward the bedroom, “Thank you.”

 

“You tell him how you feel?”

 

“Not in so many words.” Dean thinks that at one point he may have admitted to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and also to killing Jimmy Hoffa, but he had somehow managed to avoid that one specific topic.  

 

Jody harrumphs into her cup. “Shoulda known.”

 

“Shoulda known what?” It’s too early for this, Dean’s head is pounding, and there’s a naked angel in his bed that he’d like to get revved up enough to start speaking in tongues again before lunch.  

 

“That you’d take the easy way out.”

 

“Listen, I’m just, I’m more of a showing guy than a telling kind of guy.”

 

“Great, so then let me tell you something.” Jody gets up from the table with her half-drunk coffee mug and splashes the remnants down the sink.

 

“I walked into that one, huh?” There’s a blush creeping up the back of his neck and he has no earthly reason to be embarrassed about anything right now, except the fact that he’s shirtless and his chest and throat are covered in very visible, very purple Cas-created hickeys. “Jody, I swear to you, I am not committing a fuck and run. I am not.”

 

“Okay.” She leans heavily against the counter, her face momentarily obscured by the half light.  “I believe you. I do. This isn’t easy for you. You’re taking steps. Itty bitty, tiny, baby steps.”

 

“Hey, I let that guy lick my--”

 

Jody holds up her spoon in a halting motion. “Thin walls, remember?”

 

“Sorry.” His face heats up again. “I found out that there’s a bit of an extra...complication, I guess, and right now, I don’t know how much difference it would make even if I did tell him.”

 

“So you went with the universal language of love?”

 

“I went with what felt right, Sheriff.” Dean tips an imaginary hat toward his hostess. “Thank you though. I mean it. I never would have...We’ll figure it out. Maybe not right away, but we’ll figure it out.”  

 

Jody collects her gear, hooks her weapon onto her holster. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

 

“Eh, you probably should have. But I want to do the right thing.” He bends down to give her a peck on the cheek. “Thanks again. And sorry about the headboard. We’ll fix it.”

 

Jody chases him out of the room with a kitchen towel snapping at his back, and she yells over her shoulder as she leaves for work, “You’d damn well better, you animals!”

 

* * *

 

Dean returns to the bedroom having decided that he’s going to make it his job to kiss every square inch of Castiel’s body today, come hell or high water. “‘Morning, sunshine.”  

 

Cas mumbles something in return and his eyes shoot open as Dean decisively licks a straight line up the vein of his cock. “Dean.” He says with more urgency, and a warm hand latches onto the back of Dean’s neck.

 

And maybe everyone else is right that Dean's going to need grow into his big boy voice because not only does he not say "I love you" in words, he apparently also says "Good morning” and "Did you sleep well?" and "We going out for pancakes or you good with raiding Jody's fridge?" with his dick.

 

* * *

 

 

Afterward, Dean lays panting and wrapped around Cas, his head pillowed on the other man’s chest, still searching for appropriate words and coming up empty. “Holy fuck.”

 

“Indeed.” Cas traces a line down the curve of Dean’s spine. “And to think I was absent the day they taught the holy fuck in angel school.”  

 

“Well, A fucking plus for effort. You’re a natural.” Cas’s chest rises and falls beneath Dean’s head as his heart pounds out a completely unnecessary rhythm. “Hey, you’re not going to start referring to your dick as the Heavenly Host now, are you?”

 

“You know, I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it certainly does have a nice ring to it,” says Cas, zero irony in his inflection. “But wouldn’t it be more apropos to refer to your ass in that manner?”

 

“I will shoot you in your face.”  

 

Cas’s chest rumbles with a laugh. His fingertips guide Dean's chin up to his lips where he drops several light kisses along the ridge of Dean’s jaw and punctuates his wordless thought with a firmer, deeper kiss on Dean’s mouth.

 

Exhaustion begins to sink into Dean’s bones, making his eyelids heavy and turning his limbs to stone. He fights a yawn once, struggles with a second, and is soundly defeated by a third. “Dude, I am beat.”

 

A hand strokes into his hair and an arm snakes around his back to hold him tight, “It’s okay to sleep, Dean, all of this will still be here when you wake.”

 

* * *

 

The other side of the bed is empty and cold when the mid-afternoon sun urges Dean up and out of bed, and Cas’s clothes are gone.

 

“Fuck.”  

 

He throws himself into jeans, pulls on a flannel he isn’t even sure is clean, foregoes a t-shirt.  Dean stubs his toe as he goes to grab his boots and then chucks them to the side because lacing them will take too damn long. “Fuck.”  

 

In the process of grabbing at his jacket, his car keys are flung halfway across the room, landing behind the bookshelf and completely out of reach. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK!”  

 

The bedroom door bounces back with the force that Dean uses to slam it open, and he stops short in his blur of tight-lipped rage when he sees Castiel and Jody sitting politely on the sofa, seemingly deep in conversation.

 

Cas looks up, wearing one of Dean’s clean flannel shirts, the soft purplish blue one with the worn-in elbows. “Is everything alright? Is it Sam?” He hops up, ready to pounce on whatever evil has ensnared someone they love, but stops in his tracks when he sees the look in Dean’s eyes.  “Dean?”

 

“You’re wearing my shirt,” says Dean, as the the edges of his vision gray in proportion to the increase in his blood pressure, and he uses his forearm to brace himself against the door frame.

 

“Jody is allowing me to do some laundry. I missed those dryer sheets that you always used, the ones with the lavender, and she said she had some--”

 

“I thought you were gone.” Dean accuses, and he sees Jody stand out of the corner of his eye.  “I thought you had left because--”

 

Castiel tilts his head, “Why would I leave?”

 

At Dean’s elbow, he hears Jody say, “I gotta go see a man about a horse,” as she disappears from the room. His breath is coming faster than he means it to and he starts to gasp a little in an attempt to gulp down more air.  

 

“Dean? Are you feeling alright?” Cas leads him to the sofa, settles a hand over Dean’s heart.  “Inhale through your nose for four, remember, and then out through your mouth.” Goddamn Sam and his hippy-dippy YouTube mindfulness videos that he's been playing on the long car rides. He’s even managed to brainwash an Angel of the Lord with that madness.

 

Dean does as he’s told, and even as his ragged breaths get more even, there’s still a fist clutching tight in his chest. “Maybe leave a note next time?” He rasps, realizing that Castiel has twined his fingers around Dean’s, and he’s rubbing his thumb back and forth over the skin there.  “You scared me.”

 

“You scared me too, so I guess we’re even,” Cas says, flat.

 

“Cas, I don’t, I can’t...I’m not going to watch you die again.”

 

“Likewise.” He raises an eyebrow, “Why would you watch me die again?”

 

“Be-because that’s what happens, when I---” Any oxygen that supports important brain functions seems to re-route, and Dean’s sitting barefoot, fucking cracked open like a piñata, and all Cas seems able to do is stare back at him with a wide-eyed, dopey look. Like Dean could tell him he’s a serial murderer of alpaca farmers and vape-pen dealers and Cas would just say, “Okay, Dean, if it makes you happy,” and then probably kiss him and knit him a sweater out of the alpaca wool.

 

“When you what, Dean?” Cas’s eyes are made bluer by the color of his borrowed shirt, like oceans spanning horizons, placid and deep. “Talk to me.”

 

“You shouldn’t be with me.”

 

Cas makes a face like, _okay, now you’re being ridiculous_. “Okay, now you’re being ridiculous,” he says.  

 

“I know that none of this means anything to you since you got the mind-whammy in the great beyond, but it means something to me. You mean something to me.”

 

“I’m absolutely aware.”

 

 _Of course he’s aware, you dumbass. Because you’ve done nothing but slobber over him since he got back and he’s too fucking polite to tell you to back off._ Panic flares in Dean’s stomach and immediately spreads to the rest of his torso, and before he knows it, he can’t feel his own arms. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

 

Cas smooths at Dean’s hair, all calm, cool and collected, and says, “I think that you’re having psychosomatic symptoms due to an intense reaction of fear.”

 

“Hey, I’m trying to be hysterical here, don’t ruin it with facts.”

 

Cas wraps himself around Dean, then, sort of pulling Dean into his lap, and cradles Dean’s head against his own. “You are going to be fine.”

 

“I’m really not.” Dean is close enough to Cas now that all his features are in soft-focus like one of those paintings with all the dots, except really exceptionally beautiful. “I’m super fucked up.”

 

“You’re scared.”

 

“Dean Winchester does not get scared.”

 

“Well, Dean Winchester needs to admit that he can’t always control everything.”

 

“Well, Dean Winchester knows he can’t control everything, but he’d certainly like to control his own actions every once in a great fucking while.”

 

“Maybe Dean Winchester should learn to love himself.”

 

“Maybe Dean Winchester loves plenty of stuff just fine, including you, you asshole.” 

 

Cas’s lips shine where he’s just licked them, and he noses up to Dean all mock-threatening, or maybe real threatening, he’s sort of impossible to tell the difference these days.  “I love you, too, Dean.”

 

And the reality is, maybe he should learn to love himself a little better, but not until Cas knows how very fucking serious he is about his love for him.  Once it's out, it doesn't feel like something that hangs or is heavy or that _hurts_.  Dean feels lighter now, unburdened. 

Fucking Jody was right.

After the whole feelings parades dies down and Cas manages to disconnect himself from Dean’s face, Dean digs through the provisions available in Jody’s kitchen and whips them up some thick grilled cheese sandwiches that they dip into tomato soup while watching a repeat of Dr. Sexy on cable.  

 

They settle in on Jody’s lumpy plaid sofa after finishing the dishes, with Dean upright and Cas sprawled over him, when Jody emerges from her bedroom, clad in cozy red tartan pajamas. She emits a little squeaking noise as she takes in the sight of the two burly, flannel-clad hunters nuzzling on her couch.

 

“Hey there, fellas.” She collapses into the armchair with her tablet, clearly trying to school her face into a more neutral expression that hides her outright glee, “So what do you think it is? Would you say that hunter’s plaid is born out of evolution or is it merely conditioning?”

 

Cas lifts his head from his nest on Dean’s lap, looks quizzically at the psychedelic cacophony of patterns and colors that surround him and squints. “Are those my only choices?” Satisfied with the philosophical nature of his answer, Cas flops back down and arranges himself into a more comfortable position with his bare feet propped up on the arm of the sofa.

“By the way,” says Dean, as he tugs on Cas’s untucked shirttail, “Always wear this.”

“That’s impossible, this fiber will begin to biodegrade and eventually turn to nothing more than cotton dust. Don’t you see how the elbows have already begun to deteriorate?” He holds up his arm as proof, which Dean pushes playfully away, and rolls his eyes.

 

“Shut up, Cas.”

 

It's only a matter of seconds before Dean’s cellphone buzzes with a text message from Sam.  He swipes over to open it, fully expecting a link to a report on a series of random animal attacks, but instead finds himself staring at a semi-grainy image of himself and Castiel taken from what is clearly the perspective of the armchair. (Not to mention a giant yellow thumbs up emoji, because apparently, good news travels exorbitantly fast in this gossipy neck of the woods.)  

 

Because it’s Sam, Dean texts him back a series of multi-colored heart emojis, eggplants and peaches until Sam literally texts, **Uncle.**

 

His phone buzzes again, this time from Jody.

 

_You guys look really happy, Dean._

 

The realization punches him square in the chest, and just about knocks the breath from his body:

 

**We are.**

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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